The War Diary of Lieutenant General Geoffrey Keyes   by Geoffrey Keyes, edited by James W. Holsinger Jr University Press of Kentucky , Lexington, 2024,  459 pp Hardcover ISBN: 9780813198712 Reviewed By: Chris Roberts   Lieutenant General Geoffrey Keyes, a 1913 graduate of the United States Military Academy, saw active service in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations during the Second World War, and later served in occupied Germany and occupied Austria. During the North African Campaign, from November …

Land Forces 2018 was great. I just wanted to state my position clearly and up front. I also must disclose that I was a part – admittedly a very small part - of the organisation that put the event together, but my use of the word ‘great’ represents no bias or exaggeration on my part. Being great, however, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been better, nor that we shouldn’t strive for better for 2020. My focus in the first of these two posts was on reinventing Land Forces as a ‘festival’ in order to engage new …

Land Forces 2018 was a success... but what's next? Dr Albert Palazzo asks what the future of the exposition might look like.   I have attended many Land Forces expositions in my time with Army. The one that just finished was, in my opinion, the best I have witnessed. [1]  The Adelaide Convention Centre pulsed with energy as soldiers, defence civilians and trade-folk discussed the wares on display. The Chief of Army Land Forces Seminar – held in conjunction with the Land Forces 2018 exposition (or Land …

This paper shares planning observations from 3rd Brigade Headquarters Forward during Exercise Hamel, June - July 2016. These planning observations are summarised as  Three Cs : Communicate Command, control and battlespace Concurrent planning Context As Army’s Reset Brigade from June 2015 until July 2016, 3rd Brigade enabled Exercise Hamel Exercise Control and provided a command and control node at Cultana Field Training Area, South Australia. The 3rd Brigade’s command and control node was assigned under …

The word  canon  originated from Greek as  kanōn  (rule). Today, one definition of  canon  is ‘the list of works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest quality’. [1] In June 2004, the writer William S. Lind published an article titled  Two Marine Corps  [one the manoeuvre warfare Marine Corps, the second the programs, budgets and policy Marine Corps], which introduced the idea of  the canon  to military professionals: … the seven books [that]…take the reader from the first …

The Forgotten Story of How America Forged a Powerful Army Before Pearl Harbor by Paul Dickson   Grove Atlantic, 2020, 416 pp Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8021-5869-7 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8021-4767-7 E-Book ISBN: 978-0-8021-4768-4 Reviewed by: McLeod Wood  Paul Dickson has been a freelance writer since 1968 and has written historical works on American interwar slang ( War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases Since the Civil War ) and the Cold War ( Sputnik: The Shock of the Century ), to list a few. His …

The German Army and Operational Command in 1917   by Tony Cowan Cambridge University Press, 2023, 326 pp, 7 maps, 13 figures, 17 tables Hard cover ISBN: 971108830232 Reviewed By: Roger Lee Anyone interested in World War I is only too aware of the vast volume of relevant literature available: most of it is good, some of it is exceptional for its insight, explanations and analysis but, regrettably, some of it is indulgent, self-serving and, worst of all, wrong. Further, the tyranny of language has inevitably …

In Occasional Paper 16, Resetting the Australian Army , Dr Albert Palazzo identifies the key aspects of the Defence Strategic Review and their importance to Army, highlighting that the overall message is positive for the land force. Using a number of historical reviews to illustrate how Army has responded to government directed defence policy re-assessments in the past, Palazzo points to a trajectory for contemporary capability renewal. … Occasional Paper release - Resetting the Australian …

The Australian government’s intent to increase the defence workforce to 100,000 personnel by 2040 affects the Army’s future force structure, capability, and training. [1] Yet, before the implications of this target can be properly considered, the issue of recruitment must be addressed. The changing threat within the Indo-Pacific, and the lack of 10-year warning time, means that recruitment for the future is more important than ever. From the impacts of COVID-19 to ongoing natural disasters, there has been …

In the public mind, there is an inherent connection between deterrence and lethality. In the Cold War, nuclear weapons were the foundation of how the great powers deterred. So too today, much of the deterrence debate has centred on long-range strike options. Yet firepower is not everything. In 1982, the British Government sent three of its nuclear submarines south to warn Argentina against threatening the Falkland Islands. Those submarines were far more capable than anything the Argentineans possessed, yet …